In both cases, plenty of people in the US were perfectly aware that their nation was engaged in a hopeless pursuit.
Senior American officials were adamant: Kabul 2021 would bear no resemblance to Saigon 1975. The chaos of the final episode in America’s Indochinese misadventure would not be revisited. Like so many other predictions about Afghanistan, it turned out to be fatally flawed. Over the weekend, the visual image of helicopters frenziedly ferrying people out of the United States embassy compound in the capital city’s green zone inevitably evoked a sense of Saigon redux. Ultimately, though, the scenes at Kabul airport might indeed have persuaded some observers to acknowledge this was different. Because it was worse. More broadly, though, there are plenty of parallels, from propping up hopelessly corrupt and incompetent puppet governments to pretending that the associated military forces – funded, trained and equipped with the latest weaponry by the US – would somehow suffice to fend off “the enemy”. Thousands of South Vietnamese soldiers switched from military uniforms to civilian garb once it became obvious the end was nigh. A similar phenomenon has been witnessed in Afghanistan. And in both cases, a certain proportion of military personnel moonlighted as foot soldiers for their purported foes. Furthermore, in both cases, plenty of people within the Washington bureaucracy and the US military-industry complex were perfectly aware that their nation was engaged in a hopeless pursuit. The Pentagon Papers revealed 50 years ago the extent to which the establishment concealed the truth. An all-too-similar tale unfolds in The Afghanistan Papers due to be published as a book.
